Some of you were expecting it, whereas for others, it was the first time experiencing. I hope the experience was beneficial, or at least not overly painful. If there is pain to be dealt out here, it needs to coming directly from me!

Unfortunately, there are two people who will not be experiencing that Gary-induced pain any longer this season.Real life has reached out it’s fickle hand and took down two extremely strong competitors: kathrynrose and wildrose.

There is much less space ahead of us than there is behind, but I had figured both of them would be with us for a little longer. They will definitely be missed, but I hope they have time for the Home Game! (and to continue to come around to hang out, and cheer on their favorites!)

As for the rest of you - the competition continues to move forward, toward that cliff.

Two contestants have left, which means that their partners are now solo. I considered putting them together as a “Team Survivors”, but they wrote the same topic, and I figured it was better to not risk the potential of further penalizing them.

How things are working this time, is that the final vote count of each entry is going to be added together, and then divided by the number of people on the team. (For most people it will be 2, but - see example above - that also means the solos will be divided by 1. In other words, their votes will be their votes…)

The two teams with the lowest combined average will be eliminated!

This has the potential to shake things up a bit! Although seriously, there are some really good entries out there this time around, so it’s a great time to be telling folks to come read other people’s stuff as well. But now you have an extra encouragement to do so because your partner needs some love and support too!

So get out there - read, comment and vote for your favorites, and then spread the word for others to do the same!

I'm so sorry to see kathrynrose and wildrose go. I thought they were going to be here till the final stretches.

This was the week I had been dreading (the only other intersection I did, one of my friends was participating too so it was easy to pair up that time), but this went so much better than expected. I love my partner and I had so much fun — no matter what happens!

I have to say - I truly enjoyed writing as a partner this week. [Bad username: flipflop_diva&quot;] was an amazing partner and wrote an incredible entry. I hope everyone reads it and tells her what a rock star she is!